


both my hands on your hourglass

by elizajumel



Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:07:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajumel/pseuds/elizajumel
Summary: Jon laughs again. “Good Christian boy,” he says, and the words gather heat in Aaron’s stomach.
Relationships: Jonathan Bellamy/Aaron Burr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	both my hands on your hourglass

“Still alive?”

“Just.”

Jon’s laugh is soft static in his ear, less arresting than the real thing. Aaron remembers the first time he heard that laugh from the other side of the Bellamys’ front door, and the older boy who’d opened it for him, lips curved up around the ghost of a joke.

He leans his head against the wall and picks at a loose thread in the pillowcase. “Is that your standard phone greeting?”

“Only when my friends exile themselves to bumfuck, New Jersey—”

“Exile? Jon, don’t be dramatic.”

“ _Me,_ dramatic? The way you were going on all last week about spending spring break at good old Uncle Timothy’s, you’d think you were headed off to war.”

Aaron snorts, then stifles it. “Don’t make me laugh too hard. Good old Uncle Timothy’s room is right on the other side of the wall.”

“Ah, you shouldn’t have picked up then. I live to make you laugh.”

He smiles, knowing the other boy will be able to tell. “It’s good to hear your voice. Any voice that isn’t asking about my grade point average or reminding me that I have my mother’s eyes, really.”

“You could have just come home with me for the week, you know.”

“And missed Easter with the entire Edwards clan? Not a chance in hell.”

Jon laughs again. “Good Christian boy,” he says, and the words gather heat in Aaron’s stomach. “I guess it’s bad luck that the holiday coincided with break this year. My dad would have loved to have you. I think he likes you more than he likes me.”

“Most people do.”

“Dick.”

“ _Me?”_ Aaron echoes him.

“You,” Jon affirms. “The worst.”

Aaron laughs into the receiver, and is rewarded with a crackly huff. Quiet falls for a minute, the phone line full of low breathing. He’s always appreciated his friend’s capacity for comfortable silence.

“Can you hear that?” Jon says finally. “The rain.”

Aaron shuts his eyes and strains his ears for the muted crackle. “Barely.”

Muffled footsteps, then a soft grunt and the sound of wood scraping against a window frame. Rainfall filters through more clearly. Aaron can imagine the Bellamys’ damp lawn, their well-groomed begonias getting battered. Jon’s room, he knows, overlooks the garden. “Has it been raining long?” he asks.

“Excessively. I’ve barely left the house.”

“You must be bored, if you’re calling.”

“I can’t check in on my best friend without being bored?”

Aaron bites back a smile. “Doubtful.”

He can hear the barely restrained laugh and undisguised warmth mingling in Jon’s voice. “You’re right, don’t flatter yourself. It’s just the rain.”

Aaron sinks into the bed, turning his face toward the pillow as though Jon could see his fully formed grin. “Things could be worse,” he says. “Sally and her husband are here too, and Uncle Timothy’s always liked her better, so he mostly ignores me. And my younger cousins like having me around. They painted my toenails today.”

“What color?”

Aaron flexes his foot and squints in the dim light of his bedside lamp. “…Hard to say. I think they wanted to see what would happen if they layered every shade they had on hand.”

“Ah, you were always the height of fashion.”

“Fuck off,” Aaron says with no heat.

“How’s Matt?”

“Cut his leg open the other day trying to catch crabs.”

“…Like…”

“Literal crabs.”

“Literal crabs?”

“The crustaceans,” Aaron says helpfully.

Jon scoffs. “I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than the alternative. Dipshit. Is he okay?”

“He needed three stitches. But he nearly fell out of the boat and drowned, so he should be grateful he got off with a really stupid scar.”

“I hear the ladies love those.”

“Text him and tell him. He’s been in mourning for his dream of becoming a crabber.”

“Your family is so weird,” Jon tells him. “ _Please_ , let me rescue you next time. I’ve had nothing to do but bury myself in work all week. Reading about torts during spring break, it’s—” he breaks off with a yawn.

“That boring? Maybe I should reconsider law school.”

“No, you need to go to law school, and suffer as I have suffered.”

“Not exactly a glowing recommendation. And they’re going to let some half-assed lawyer like you duke out billion-dollar cases in court?”

“You’ll be much better at it than me, I’m sure,” Jon says, yawning again. “And who said anything about billions of dollars?”

“Oh, when I inevitably drop out of college, I’ll need someone to support the standard of luxury to which I’ve become accustomed.”

“Like you could ever be a trophy wife.”

“Stay at home husband,” Aaron corrects him. “I think I’d be great at it. Very third-wave.”

“You’ve never cleaned or cooked a day in your life.”

“That’s what the billions of dollars are for.”

“So what will _you_ do, then?”

“Sit around, looking pretty.”

Jon’s eyeroll is audible. “Stay in school, little Burr.”

They lapse into silence again. Aaron breaks it this time. “Are you sleeping soon, then? You sound exhausted. You shouldn’t study so hard during break—it’s break.”

“No, I’m okay, it’s not the studying. Didn’t get much sleep, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I get that. It’s hard falling asleep across the room from a full-size print of Rembrandt’s _Return of the Prodigal Son_.”

“Seriously?”

“He had it installed after I left for college. A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

“No shit.” Jon pauses. “I’m sorry. At least it’s only five more days.”

“Have your dad offer to take me off my uncle’s hands next time. He’ll be relieved.”

“Gladly.”

“I think he thinks you’re a good influence on me.”

Jon snorts. “Funny.”

“Is it?”

“It would be if he knew why I was up so late last night.” Aaron opens his mouth, confused, but the rustle of sheets overtakes him, and when Jon speaks again his voice sounds closer to the receiver, channeled straight into Aaron’s ear. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

Oh, Aaron mouths, then, “Oh,” out loud. They’ve been circling this for months, it seems, in flirty, inconsequential exchanges and more serious ones, through which the other boy had come to know more about him than anyone else—more than Aaron was comfortable with, almost.

Jon, predictably, lets silence fill the line for a few seconds. Aaron sorts through their conversation, the way Jon’s voice dropped in pitch—barely perceptible but for how well Aaron knows it—with that last sentence.

He glances at the wall. “What were you thinking about?”

“You, in your room, alone,” and Aaron’s unprepared for the other boy’s voice to shift again, lower, richer. “Well, I have no idea what your room looks like. Other than your uncle’s taste in art.”

“Not exactly the stuff of fantasy.”

“Oh?” It’s a fraught invitation, that one word, delivered with a bemused thoughtfulness that belies its intensity. “You’ve never found anything…provocative, about the faith?”

Aaron feels his breath come out hard, _good Christian boy_ stirring in his gut. “Is that your fetish? Son of a preacher man?”

“Sex and religion, Aaron, they’re not so far apart.”

He has to bite back an audible response to that—his name in Jon’s mouth, in this voice. “Tell me more.”

“I will,” Jon promises. “But first—you’re alone?”

“Everyone’s gone to bed. But it’s a full house.”

“You’ll have to be quiet, then.”

 _Fuck_. “Yes.”

“Good,” the older boy says. “Have you done this before?”

“A few times,” Aaron replies. “But never here.”

“Under good old Uncle Timothy’s roof.” Jon sounds like he’s smiling. “There’s something deliciously profane about it, don’t you think?”

“About _what?”_ Aaron can’t help asking, even though he knows. He wants to hear Jon say it.

Jon doesn’t disappoint. “Getting you off with your relatives in the next room,” he says, and heat rips through Aaron’s body, shocks him out of his skin with the speed of his desire. “I’ll talk you through it, but I’d do more if I were there.”

“Tell me,” Aaron says again, already reaching for the fly of his jeans.

Jon’s low laughter flickers through him, a slower heat like candlelight. “You’re always so intent when you’re studying. I want to find out how much it would take to distract you.”

“Distract me how,” Aaron breathes, thumbing the head of his cock.

“I’d sit down on the bed behind you. Wrap my arms around your waist, and kiss your neck. Find out how you taste—” Jon’s breathing hitches on the line, brief but long enough for Aaron to understand that he’s touching himself too. The thought makes him even harder, and the roughness of Jon’s voice when he speaks again. “On second thought, I do want to know how long it would take you to break, but I’d lose patience with your book sooner than later.”

Aaron exhales and smiles, head falling back into the pillows as he keeps stroking. “So fast?”

“I’ve been waiting _so_ long,” Jon murmurs. “I’d push you flat onto the bed. And take off all your ridiculous, expensive clothes—one piece at a time—button by button. You’d be begging me to hurry up, saying my name so sweetly, and I’d have to cover your mouth with my hand so you don’t wake up the whole house.”

“Fuck,” Aaron does say out loud then, and “ _Bell_ ,” almost a prayer in its fervency, and has to press his own palm over his mouth. “Don’t stop,” he whispers.

“You’ve never called me that,” Jon says, sounding pleased. “I like it. I want to hear it more.”

“Okay, yes, just—keep going—”

“Oh, you _really_ like this,” Jon drawls. “You like how I talk to you? You like me talking about fucking you in your family’s house? Stuffing one of your old prep school ties into your mouth so they can’t hear you moaning?”

“God, _yes_ ,” Aaron manages, “please, Jon, I need it—”

“Such a good boy,” Jon says, and Aaron almost bites clean through his lip—no one’s ever called him that before, and it _gets_ to him, for reasons he’d rather not linger on. “Are you close?”

“Yes—”

“Good,” Jon says again. “Come for me. I want to hear you—”

Aaron fists his free hand in the sheets and brings them up to his face, shaking with the effort of keeping quiet as Jon’s directive pushes him over the edge, only allowing the phone to pick up the gasps that escape the sides of his mouth, and because he can’t help it, “ _Fuck_ , Bell—so good,” as soft as he can manage, but probably still too loud. He can hear the other boy’s breathing grow ragged, and “ _Aaron_ ,” in that unfamiliar new register, dark and rich and low, better than all the other things Jon said put together.

Quiet, but for both of their inhales and exhales. Aaron makes no move yet to clean up. “That was unexpected,” he says at length.

Jon huffs out a laugh. “Was it?”

“Unexpected…but inevitable,” Aaron says. “I saw the way you looked at me when we met. This was always in the cards.”

“Cocky,” Jon says, entirely affectionate. “Ironic, then, how much you like being told what to do.”

“You know too much now,” Aaron murmurs, sleepiness descending on him.

“Kill me if you must,” says Jon. “But—I’d like a repeat first. In five days.”

“In person,” Aaron clarifies.

“In person.”

“Your place or mine?”

Jon chuckles. “James might have an aneurysm if we met at yours. Come over. I’ll be back by Sunday afternoon. I’ll make you dinner.”

“You’re cooking?”

“I’ll order pizza,” Jon amends.

“Mm, romantic.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Jon promises, and Aaron smiles despite himself.

“Looking forward to it,” he whispers, and Jon lets out a quiet, frustrated noise. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Rub it in more, why don’t you.”

“You started it.”

“I did,” Jon says ruefully. “Now go to bed.”

“Is that an order?”

Jon laughs again as he hangs up, and it’s the last thing Aaron hears as he meanders toward sleep, that low, wrung-out laugh he’s never heard before, one he wants to draw from Jon’s mouth every day, and the soft, insistent sound of rain as the line clicks off.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Børns's "Holy Ghost."


End file.
